When India was turned into a vast prison house

Hindustan Times

21-06-2025

On the 50th anniversary of its promulgation, falling on June 25, the horrors of the national Emergency (1975-1977) will be recalled by just about everyone as the darkest period in post-Independence India. The Emergency regime's abuse of power, its brutal suppression of democratic opposition and muzzling of free thought and expression will be excavated from the past, roundly and rightly rebuked. The ruling establishment will cite the Emergency's excesses, the Indian National Congress will not deny the venality of those excesses. Indeed, it cannot. But it will also respond by asking the government, 'What about yours?' In the slanging match that might ensue, the lessons that need to be learnt from its horrors may well get lost. Jayaprakash Narayan, as he was being taken to jail, is said to have remarked vinasha kaale viparita buddhi. (HT Archive)
For me, the horror of all the horrors of the Emergency was that India had become a vast prison house. Fear gripped the political class, the intelligentsia, the business community, and the media. During the Emergency, it has been estimated that 34,988 people were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act and 75,818 people were arrested under the Defence of India Act and Rules.
As a 30-year-old junior officer in the Tamil Nadu cadre of the IAS, I felt like I was suddenly imprisoned myself, unable to speak my mind without looking over my shoulders, for walls had overnight acquired ears, corridors eyes. Newspapers were under the strictest censorship, and the radio relayed only government-sponsored news.
Word came through, nonetheless, of Jayaprakash Narayan, the country's tallest leader, having been woken up at three in the morning and taken to jail, and his saying, as he was being moved, vinasha kaale vipareeta buddhi (as perdition nears, the ruler loses his mind). National leaders like Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar, were all taken in. As were student leaders including Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury of the CPM, and Arun Jaitley of the BJP. George Fernandes was captured after some months of being underground. His supporter Snehalatha Reddy was thrown into prison, tortured and died shortly after, while on parole. P Rajan, a student at the Regional Engineering College, Calicut, was arrested by the police in Kerala on March 1, 1976. He was tortured to death in custody. His body was never found.
This sequence, transposed over what I had learnt of jailings during the British Raj, made the prison the ugliest symbol of the State for me. It also made the prison something I wanted to see and get to know in the course of my work as a civil servant. Had I become a district collector that chance would have come to me organically. But as it happened, that coveted position eluded me in my career in the IAS. I came to see the inside of a jail only years later when, working in West Bengal, I did what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked all governors to do. I visited correctional homes, as jails were by then called.
In one, a bearded young man came up to me and said in Hindustani: 'Huzoor, I am a Pakistani. I wanted to visit Ajmer Sharif for a minnat (vow). I got a visa and came. But my mistake was I came alone. I was detained on the suspicion of being a terrorist. I want to make no request or complaint to you. I only want to thank you. By arresting me and putting me in this jail, India has done me a favour. I have found a copy of the Holy Quran in the library here and have read it for the first time from beginning to end…' I did not know what to say to him. Was he being ironic, sarcastic, genuinely appreciative? In any case, he was being totally intellectual.
In another correctional home, as I was leaving, completely torn by the spectacle of elderly women sentenced for dowry killings, and by a section cruelly called pagal ward (ward of the mad), I was accosted by a young Bengali inmate. 'Saer,' he said breathlessly, in Bangla, 'Our library here… it needs a regular supply of good new books.' He could have been a final year student in any of our universities.
In yet another, the inmates made a plain request: 'Can we have, just for the day, Sir, a TV installed to enable us to watch the Wimbledon Open?' This was done, to the great delight of the set there that might have included murderers, rapists, thieves. But all of them were for that day, tennis fans no different from other free followers of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. We who are 'out' do not know the story of those who are 'in'.
India is under no Emergency today. But is the horror of Emergency horrors, the jail, call it by whatever name, not a grim reality? Are there no political detenus in India today? Is the threat of imprisonment not active in our political economy? The 50th anniversary of the promulgation of the Emergency should respect history, not serve politics.
The Congress has a truly golden opportunity to offer an unequivocal and unstinting apology for each and every transgression committed in the course of that Emergency, across the gamut of human rights, political norms, legal nostrums. Would it be too much to expect the Congress president to call on arguably the seniormost living ex-prisoner of the Emergency era, Advaniji and offer him a personal apology? He should do this not as the president of the party that was in power during the Emergency, but the party that led India to freedom. And the government has a golden opportunity to do something beyond recalling the Emergency's horrors.
What may that be?
It can announce a chapter-turn in India's penological history by releasing all so-called political detenus, and by saying detaining persons for their political views, when not accompanied by incitement to violence, or hatred, will henceforth not happen. More, it can alter for all time, our prison profile, turning our jails into serious centres for state-of-the-art correctional services across physical and mental counselling, personality therapy, re-orientation, where there is no question of custodial torture, where prisoner-on-prisoner violence and perversions are erased, where in-jail crimes with outside collaboration, especially in drugs-abuse, are a thing of the past. Above all, it can put life into the amendment of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) which by, Section 436A (new Section 479 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita) allowing for the release of undertrial prisoners on bail after they have served half of the maximum sentence prescribed for their alleged offence, provided it is not a capital offence (punishable by death or life imprisonment). Seventy-five percent of the inmates of our scandalously overcrowded correctional homes are undertrials, most of whom are very likely innocent.
The practice of releasing prisoners at anniversaries is an old and respected tradition across the world. The government of India will show by tangible deed its abhorrence of the imprisoning spree that marked the Emergency if it startles the nation by this radical reform.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a student of modern Indian history and the author of The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India. The views expressed are personal.